Danielle Santagata
Jay Fogleman
EDC 102 H
27 September 2011
"The Greatest Obstacle We Face" Reflection
According to Robert L. Fried, "Nobody cares what's going on intellectually in the classroom or the school, when the idea of learning is treated as a mindless duty– something to 'get through any way you can.'" I believe this statement is completely true. The majority of kids and teachers these days don't really care about school. Teachers are paid to be there, and they're getting paid no matter what, so why bother making things difficult? Everyone has, at least once in their life, participated in the "Game of School." I know I have. Throughout my high school experience especially, I felt like I wasn't actually learning anything important that would help me later on in life. We would always ask "When am I ever going to use this in real life?," and we never seemed to get a straight answer. Some of my teachers would just assign us busy work; things that didn't even matter in class because they were so insignificant. Students would rush through it, not really caring what they were saying, and the teacher still accepted it. I feel like teachers just restate what's in textbooks and we're just supposed to recite it back to them, kind of like a parrot. Schools, in particular, I feel are only striving for higher test scores and not spending enough time teaching things that are actually important. Everyone just goes through the motions of school for the most part. In high school kids would just skip class because "I don't learn anything in (insert class name here) anyway," and the sad part was… it was usually true. Students complain when classes are hard because they know they actually have to try, but those classes are usually the ones you learn the most in. I always tried to challenge myself in high school. I took my work very seriously and even when the assignment was simple I would find myself spending additional time on it even when I knew most of my classmates didn't; I didn't just try to "get by." I appreciated it when my teachers were actually interested in what they were saying and would spend any additional time they had helping out their students. That, to me, showed they really wanted their students to learn. More teachers need to be like that, and more students need to take advantage of what's right in front of them: an opportunity to learn.
Jay Fogleman
EDC 102 H
27 September 2011
"The Greatest Obstacle We Face" Reflection
According to Robert L. Fried, "Nobody cares what's going on intellectually in the classroom or the school, when the idea of learning is treated as a mindless duty– something to 'get through any way you can.'" I believe this statement is completely true. The majority of kids and teachers these days don't really care about school. Teachers are paid to be there, and they're getting paid no matter what, so why bother making things difficult? Everyone has, at least once in their life, participated in the "Game of School." I know I have. Throughout my high school experience especially, I felt like I wasn't actually learning anything important that would help me later on in life. We would always ask "When am I ever going to use this in real life?," and we never seemed to get a straight answer. Some of my teachers would just assign us busy work; things that didn't even matter in class because they were so insignificant. Students would rush through it, not really caring what they were saying, and the teacher still accepted it. I feel like teachers just restate what's in textbooks and we're just supposed to recite it back to them, kind of like a parrot. Schools, in particular, I feel are only striving for higher test scores and not spending enough time teaching things that are actually important. Everyone just goes through the motions of school for the most part. In high school kids would just skip class because "I don't learn anything in (insert class name here) anyway," and the sad part was… it was usually true. Students complain when classes are hard because they know they actually have to try, but those classes are usually the ones you learn the most in. I always tried to challenge myself in high school. I took my work very seriously and even when the assignment was simple I would find myself spending additional time on it even when I knew most of my classmates didn't; I didn't just try to "get by." I appreciated it when my teachers were actually interested in what they were saying and would spend any additional time they had helping out their students. That, to me, showed they really wanted their students to learn. More teachers need to be like that, and more students need to take advantage of what's right in front of them: an opportunity to learn.